Heart of Man by George Edward Woodberry

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While it is true that the object of ideal method is to reach universals,
and reembody them in particular instances, this reasoning action is
often obscurely felt by the imagination in its creative process. The
very fact that its operation is through the concrete complicates the
process. The mind of genius working out its will does not usually start
with a logical attempt consciously; it does not arrive at truth in the
abstract and then reduce it to concrete illustration in any systemic
way; it does not select the law and then shape the plot. The poet is
rather directly interested in certain characters and events that appeal
to him; his sympathies are aroused, and he proceeds to show forth, to
interpret, to create; and in proportion as the characters he sets in
motion and the circumstances in which they are placed have moulding
force, they will develop traits and express themselves in influences
that he did not foresee. This is a matter of familiar knowledge to
authors, who frequently discover in the trend of the imaginary tale a
will of its own, which has its unforeseen way. The drama or story, once
set in motion, tends to tell itself, just as life tends to develop in
the world. The vitality of the clay it works in, is one of the curious
experiences of genius, and occasions that mood of mystery in relation to
their creatures frequently observed in great writers. In fact, this mode
of working in the concrete, which is characteristic of the creative
imagination, gives to its activity an inductive and experimental
character, not to be confounded with the demonstrative act of the
intellect which states truth after knowing it, and not in the moment of
its discovery. In literature this moment of discovery is what makes that
flash which is sometimes called intuition, and is one of the great
charms of genius.

The concrete nature of ideal art, to touch conveniently here upon a
related though minor topic, is also the reason that it expresses more
than its creator is aware of. In imaging life he includes more reality
than he attends to; but if his representation has been made with truth,
others may perceive phases of reality that he neglected. It is the mark
of genius, as has hitherto appeared, to grasp life, not fragmentarily,
but in the whole. So, in a scientific experiment, intended to illustrate
one particular form of energy, a spectator versed in another science may
detect some truth belonging in his own field. This richer significance
of great works is especially found where the union of the general and
the particular is strong; where the fusion is complete, as in Hamlet. In
a sense he is more real than living men, and we can analyze his nature,
have doubts about his motives, judge differently of his character, and
value his temperament more or less as one might with a friend. The more
imaginative a character is, in the sense that his personality and
experience are given in the whole so that one feels the bottom of
reality there, the more significance it has. Thus in the world of art
discoveries beyond the intention of the writer may be made as in the
actual world; so much of reality does it contain.

Will it be said that, in making primary the universal contents and
spiritual significance of type and plot, I have made literature
didactic, as if the word should stop my mouth? If it is meant by this
that I maintain that literature conveys truth, it may readily be
admitted, since only thus can it interest the mind which has its whole
life in the pursuit and its whole joy in the possession of truth. But if
it be meant that abstract or moral instruction has been made the
business of literature, the charge may be met with a disclaimer, as
should be evident, first, from the emphasis placed on its concrete
dealing with persons and actions. On the contrary, literature fails in
art precisely in proportion as it becomes expressly such a teacher.
Secondly, the life which literature organizes, the whole of human nature
in its relation to the world, is many-sided; and imaginative genius, the
creative reason, grasps it in its totality. The moral aspect is but one
among many that life wears. If ethics are implicit in the mass of life,
so also are beauty and passion, pathos, humour, and terror; and in
literature any one of these may be the prominent phase at the moment,
for literature gives out not only practical moral wisdom, but all the
reality of life. Literature is didactic in the reproachful sense of the
word only in proportion as type and plot are distinctly separated from
the truth they embody, and ceases to be so in proportion as these are
blended and unified. The fable is one of the most ancient forms of such
didactic literature; in it a story is told to enforce a lesson, and
animals are made the characters, in consequence of which it has the
touch of humour inseparable from the spectacle of beasts playing at
being men; but the very fact that the moral is of men and the tale is of
beasts involves a separation of the truth from its concrete embodiment,
and besides the moral is stated by itself. In the Oriental apologue an
advance is made. The parables of our Lord, in particular, are admirable
examples of its method. The characters are few, the situations common,
the action simple, and the moral truth or lesson enforced is so
completely clothed in the tale that it needs no explanation; at the same
time, the mind is aware of the teacher. In the higher forms of
literature, however, the fusion of ethics with life may be complete.
Here the poet works so subtly that the mind is not aware of the
illumination of this light which comes without the violence of the
preacher, until after the fact; and, indeed, the effect is wrought more
through the sympathies than the reason. In such a case literature,
though it conveys moral with other kinds of truth, is not open to the
charge of didacticism, which is valid only when teaching is explicit and
abstract. The educative power of literature, however, is not diminished
because in its art it dispenses with the didactic method, which by its
very definiteness is inelastic and narrow; in fact, the more imaginative
a character is, the more fruitful it may be even in moral truth; it may
teach, as has been said, what the poet never dreamed his work contained.

If, then, to sum up the argument thus far, the subject-matter of
literature is life in the forms of personality and experience, and the
particular facts with respect to these are generalized by means of type
and plot in concrete form, and so are set forth as phases of an ordered
world for the intelligence, to the end that man may know himself in the
same way as he knows nature in its living system--if this be so, what
standing have those who would restrict literature to the actual in life?
who would replace ideal types of manhood by the men of the time, and
the ordered drama of the stage by the medley of life? They deny art,
which is the instrument of the creative reason, to literature; for as
soon as art, which is the process of creating a rational world, begins,
the necessity for selection arises, and with it the whole question of
values, facts being no longer equal among themselves on the score of
actuality, nor in fitness for the work in hand. The trivial, the
accidental, the unmeaning, are rejected, and there will be no stopping
short of the end; for art, being the handmaid of truth, can employ no
other than the method of all reason, wherefore idealism is to it what
abstraction is to logic and induction to natural science,--the breath of
its rational being. Those who hold to realism in its extreme form, as a
representation of the actual only, behave as if one should say to the
philosopher--leave this formulation of general notions and be content
with sensible objects; or to the scientist--experiment no more, but
observe the course of nature as it may chance to arise, and describe it
in its succession. They bid us be all eye, no mind; all sense, no
thought; all chance, all confusion, no order, no organization, no
fabric of the reason. But there are no such realists; though pure
realism has its place, as will hereafter be shown, it is usually found
mixed with ideal method; and as commonly employed the word designates
the preference merely for types and plots of much detail, of narrow
application, of little meaning, in opposition to the highly generalized
and significant types and plots usually associated with the term
idealism. In what way such realism has its place will also appear at a
later stage. Here it is necessary to say no more than that in proportion
as realism uses the ideal method only at the lowest, it narrows its
appeal, weakens its power, and takes from literature her highest
distinction by virtue of which she grasps the whole of character and
fate in her creation and informs man of the secrets of his human heart,
the course of his mortal destiny, and the end of all his spiritual
effort and aspiration.

I am aware that I have not proceeded so far without starting objections.
To meet that which is most grave, what shall I say when it is alleged
that there is no order such as I have assumed in life; or, if there be,
that it is insufficiently known, too intangible and complex, too
various in different races and ages, to be made the subject of such an
exposition as obtains of natural order? Were this assertion true, yet
there would be good reason to retain our illusion; for the mind delights
in order, and will invent it. The mind is perplexed and disturbed until
it finds this order; and in the progressive integration of its
experience into an ordered world lies its work. Art gives pleasure to
the intellect, because in its structure whatever is superfluous and
extrinsic has been eliminated, so that the mind contemplates an artistic
work as a unity of relations bound each to each which it fully
comprehends. Such works, we say, have form, which is just this
interdependence of parts wholly understood which appeals to the
intellect, and satisfies it: they would please the mind, though the
order they embody were purely imaginary, just as science would delight
it, were the order of nature itself illusory. Creative art would thus
still have a ground of being under a sceptical philosophy; man would
delight to dream his dream. But it is not necessary to take this lower
line of argument.

It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the
soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and
universal as in the material world. The soul of man has a common being
in all. There could be no science of logic, psychology, or metaphysics
on the hypothesis of any uncertainty as to the identity of mind in all,
nor any science of ethics on the hypothesis of any variation as to the
identity of the will in all, nor any ground of expression even, of
communication between man and man, on the hypothesis of any radical
difference in the experience and faculties to which all expression
appeals for its intelligibility; neither could there be any system of
life in social groups, or plan for education, unless such a common basis
is accepted. The postulate of a common human nature is analogous to that
of the unity of matter in science; it finds its complete expression in
the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, for if race be fundamentally
distinguished from race as was once thought, it is only as element is
distinguished from element in the old chemistry. So, too, the postulate
of an order obtaining in the soul, universal and necessary, independent
of man's volition, analogous in all respects to the order of nature, is
parallel with that of the constancy of physical law. A rational life
expects this order. The first knowledge of it comes to us, as that of
natural law, by experience; in the social world--the relations of men to
one another--and in the more important region of our own nature we learn
the issue of certain courses of action as well as in the external world;
in our own lives and in our dealings with others we come to a knowledge
of, and a conformity to, the conditions under which we live, the laws
operant in our being, as well as those of the physical world. Literature
assumes this order; in Aeschylus, Cervantes, or Shakspere, it is this
that gives their work interest. Apart from natural science, the whole
authority of the past in its entire accumulation of wisdom rests upon
the permanence of this order, and its capacity to be known by man; that
virtue makes men noble and vice renders them base, is a statement without
meaning unless this order is continuous through ages; all principles of
action, all schemes of culture, would be uncertain except on this
foundation.

So near is this order to us that it was known long before science came
to any maturity. We have added, in truth, little to our knowledge of
humanity since the Greeks; and if one wonders why ethics came before
science, let him own at least that its priority shows that it is near
and vital in life as science is not. We can do, it seems, without
Kepler's laws, but not without the Decalogue. The race acquires first
what is most needful for life; and man's heart was always with him, and
his fate near. A second reason, it may be noted, for the later
development of science is that our senses, as used by science, are more
mental now, and the object itself is observable only by the intervention
of the mind through the telescope or microscope or a hundred instruments
into which, though physical, the mind enters. Our methods, too, as well
as our instruments, are things of the mind. It behooves us to remember
in an age which science is commonly thought to have materialized, that
more and more the mind enters into all results, and fills an ever larger
place in life; and this should serve to make materialism seem more and
more what it is--a savage conception. But recognizing the great place of
mind in modern science, and its growing illumination of our earthly
system, I am not disposed to discredit its earliest results in art and
morals. I find in this penetration of the order of the world within us
our most certain truth; and as our bodies exist only by virtue of
sharing in the general order of nature, so, I believe, our souls have
being only by sharing in this order of the inward, the spiritual world.

What, then, is this order? We do not merely contemplate it: we are
immersed in it, it is vital in us, it is that wherein we live and move
and have our being, ever more and more in proportion as the soul's life
outvalues the body in our experience. It is necessary to expand our
conception of it. Hitherto it has been presented only as an order of
truth appealing to the intellect: but the intellect is only one function
of the soul, and thinkers are the merest fraction of mankind. We know
this order not only as truth, but as righteousness; we know that certain
choices end in enlarging and invigorating our faculties, and other
choices in their enfeeblement and extinction; and the race adds, acting
under the profound motive of self-preservation, that it is a duty to do
the one thing and avoid the other, and stores up this doctrine in
conscience. We know this order again under the aspect of joy, for joy
attends some choices, and sorrow others; and again under the aspect of
beauty, for certain choices result in beauty and others in deformity.
What I maintain is that this order exists under four aspects, and may be
learned in any of them--as an order of truth in the reason, as an order
of virtue in the will, as an order of joy in the emotions, as an order
of beauty in the senses. It is the same order, the same body of law,
operating in each case; it is the vital force of our fourfold life,--it
has one unity in the intellect, the will, the emotions, the senses,--is
equal to the whole nature of man, and responds to him and sustains him
on every side. A lover of beauty in whom conscience is feeble cannot
wander if he follow beauty; nor a cold thinker err, though without a
moral sense, if he accept truth; nor a just man, nor a seeker after pure
joy merely, if they act according to knowledge each in his sphere. The
course of action that increases life may be selected because it is
reasonable, or joyful, or beautiful, or right; and therefore one may say
fearlessly, choose the things that are beautiful, the things that are
joyful, the things that are reasonable, the things that are right, and
all else shall be added unto you. The binding force in this order is
what literature, ideal literature, most brings out and emphasizes in its
generalizations, that causal union which has hitherto been spoken of in
the region of plot only; but it exists in every aspect of this order,
and literature universalizes experience in all these realms, in the
provinces of beauty and passion no less than in those of virtue and
knowledge, and its method is the same in all.

Is not our knowledge of this fourfold order in its principles, in those
relations of its phenomena which constitute its laws, of the highest
importance of anything of human concern? In harmony with these laws, and
only thus, we ourselves, in whom this order is, become happy, righteous,
wise, and beautiful. In ideal literature this knowledge is found,
expressed, and handed down age after age--the knowledge of necessary and
permanent relations in these great spheres which, taken together,
exhaust the capacities of life. Man's moral sense is strong in
proportion as he apprehends necessity in the sequence of will and act;
his intellect is strong, his emotions, his sense of beauty, are strong
in the same way in proportion as he apprehends necessity in each several
field of experience. And conversely, the weakness of the intellect lies
in a greater or less failure to realise relations of fact in their
logic; and the other faculties, in proportion as they fail to realize
such relations in their own region, have a similar incapacity. Insanity,
in the broad sense, is involuntary error in a nature incapable of
effectual enlightenment, and hence abnormal or diseased; but the state
of error, whether more or less, whether voluntary or involuntary,
whether curable or incurable, in itself is the same. To take an example
from one sphere, in the moral world the criminal through ignorance of or
distrust in or revolt from the supreme divine law seeks to maintain
himself by his own power solitarily as if he might be a law unto
himself; he experiences, without the intervention of any human judge,
the condemnation which consigns him to enfeeblement and extinction
through the decay and death of his nature, as a moral being, stage by
stage; this is God's justice, visiting sin with death. Similarly, and to
most more obviously, in society itself, the criminal against society,
because he does not understand, or believe, or prefers not to accept
arbitrary social law as the means by which necessarily the general good,
including his own, is worked out, seeks to substitute for it his own
intelligence, his cunning, in his search for prosperity, as he conceives
it, by an adaptation of means to ends on his own account. This is why
the imperfection of human law is sometimes a just excuse for social
crime in those whom society does not benefit, its slaves and pariahs.
But whether in God's world or in man's, the mind of the criminal,
disengaging itself from reliance on the whole fabric for whatever
reason, pulverizes because he fails to realize the necessary relations
of the world in which he lives in their normal operation, and has no
effectual belief in them as unavoidably operant in his nature or over
his fortunes. This was the truth that lay in the Platonic doctrine that
all sin is ignorance; but Plato did not take account of any possible
depravity in the will. Nor is what has been illustrated above true of
the mind and the will only. In the region of emotion and of beauty,
there may be similar aberration, if these are not grasped in their vital
nature, in organic relation to the whole of life.

These several parts of our being are not independent of one another, but
are in the closest alliance. They act conjointly and with one result in
the single soul in which they find their unity as various energies of
one personal power. It cannot be that contradiction should arise among
them in their right operation, nor the error of one continue undetected
by the others; that the base should be joyful or the wicked beautiful in
reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the
pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the
inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem
pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to
assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as
if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of
the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, all together. To
represent a villain as attractive is an error of art, which thus
misrepresents the harmony of our nature. Satan, as conceived by Milton,
may seem to be a majestic figure, but he was not so to Milton's
imagination. "The Infernal Serpent" is the first name the poet gives
him; and though sublime imagery of gloom and terror is employed to
depict his diminished brightness and inflamed malice, Milton repeatedly
takes pains to degrade him to the eye, as when in Paradise he is
surprised at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad"; and when he springs up
in his own form there, as the "grisly king," he mourns most his beauty
lost; neither is his resolute courage long admirable. To me, at least,
so far from having any heroic quality, he seems always the malign fiend
sacrificing innocence to an impotent revenge. In all great creations of
art it is necessary that this consistency of beauty, virtue, reason, and
joy should he preserved.

It is true that the supremacy of law in this inward world, so
constituted, is less realized than in the physical world; but even in
the latter the wide conviction of its supremacy is a recent thing, and
in some parts of nature it is still lightly felt, especially in those
which touch the brain most nearly, while under the stress of exceptional
calamity or strong desire or traditional religious beliefs it often
breaks down. But if the order of the material universe seems now a more
settled thing than the spiritual law of the soul, once the case was
reversed; God was known and nature miraculous. It must be remembered,
too, in excuse of our feebleness of faith, that we are born bodily into
the physical world and are forced to live under its law; but life in the
spiritual world is more a matter of choice, at least in respect to its
degree; its phenomena are, in part, contingent upon our development and
growth, on our living habitually and intelligently in our higher nature,
the laws of which as communicated to us by other minds are in part
prophecies of experience not yet actual in ourselves. It is the
touchstone of experience, after all, that tries all things in both
worlds, and experience in the spiritual world may be long delayed; it is
power of mind that makes wide generalizations in both; and the
conception of spiritual law is the most refined as perhaps it is the
most daring of human thoughts.

The expansion of the conception of ideal literature so as to embrace
these other aspects, in addition to that of rational knowledge which has
thus far been exclusively dwelt upon, requires us to examine its nature
in the regions of beauty, joy, and conscience, in which, though
generalization remains its intellectual method, it does not make its
direct appeal to the mind. It is not enough to show that the creative
reason in its intellectual process employs that common method which is
the parent of all true knowledge, and by virtue of its high matter,
which is the divine order in the soul, holds the primacy among man's
faculties; the story were then left half told, and the better part yet
to come. To enlighten the mind is a great function; but in the mass of
mankind there are few who are accessible to ideas as such, especially on
the unworldly side of life, or interested in them. Idealism does not
confine its service to the narrow bounds of intellectuality. It has a
second and greater office, which is to charm the soul. So characteristic
of it is this power, so eminent and shining, that thence only springs
the sweet and almost sacred quality breathing from the word itself.
Idealism, indeed, by the garment of sense does not so much clothe wisdom
as reveal her beauty; so the Greek sculptor discloses the living form by
the plastic folds. Truth made virtue is her work of power, and she
imposes upon man no harder task than the mere beholding of that sight--

"Virtue in her shape how lovely,"

which since it first abashed the devil in Paradise makes wrong-doers
aware of their deformity, and yet has such subtle and penetrating might,
such fascination for all finer spirits, that they have ever believed
with their master, Plato, that should truth show her countenance
unveiled and dwell on earth, all men would worship and follow her.

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